Ridiculous Bulk Rare Skyrockets 123% Thanks to Final Fantasy Synergy

Last updated on June 6, 2025

Sage of Hours – illus. Matt Stewart

After months of anticipation, Final Fantasy is finally on our doorsteps, and it feels great. Sold out Prereleases across the country come as no surprise, as FIN is already the most popular MTG set ever released (at least gauging by the sheer quantity of preorders!)

While tons of players will be duking it out at LGS playing Sealed this weekend, plenty of folks are still patiently waiting for their Commander precons to arrive. One card in particular seems to have a wide variety of players excited.

Bulk Bin Blue Rare?

Yuna's Decision – Illus. Yuu Fujiki

Sage of Hours is a blue wizard from Journey into Nyx with busted ability. It does take quite a bit of set up, which is probably one of the big reasons it hovered around the $1 or $2 mark for so long. It's rising quick, most copies are going for $5-$10 now.

That Heroic ability may have worked well in Journey into Nyx's Limited/Standard environment, but it has been severely outclassed by power creep. Targeting your own creature repeatedly to put +1/+1 counters on it…isn't very good. The thing that's made this guy double in price in the past month is that second block of text

“Remove all +1/+1 counters from Sage of Hours: For each five counters removed this way, take an extra turn after this one.”

Now THAT we can work with.

Bant Precon Synergy

Tidus and Yuna's Counter Blitz Precon seems to be responsible for the spike. It was announced on May 12th, and players started realizing how cracked Sage of Hours was with the deck.

source: TCGplayer

As you can see from the graph above, it's been a steady climb for this human wizard.

There are NUMEROUS ways to jack the number of +1/+1 counters on Sage up, and many of them come ready to play in the precon. Yuna, Grand Summoner will let you put +1/+1 counters on Sage equal to the number of counters (of any type!) on a permanent when it's put into a graveyard.

So imagine casting a bunch of low-cost creatures or cantrips with a Hardened Scales effect and Inexorable Tide on the board. If you can find a way to protect Sage of Hours from a pesky boardwipe, you could possibly chain several turns! Classics like Forgotten Ancient do insane work here too.

According to EDHrec, Sage is already in 20% of Yuna decks at prerelease. The card is in high demand, and not only that, it's in very low supply. It's only been printed once, and that was more than ten years ago.

Other Noteworthy Synergies?

Slippery Bogbonder – illus. Mila Pesic

This hilariously named human druid paired with Sage of Hours could easily let you chain a ton of extra turns at the beginning of an opponent's end step. Not only that, Slippery Bogbonder provides a hexproof counter, giving Sage some much needed protection.

This freaky guy is another excellent option for protecting your feeble Sage. Protection is very much the name of the game here. +1/+1 counter decks usually want to run a fair bit of protection anyhow, as losing buffed creatures tends to be problematic for the strategy.

Cards like Contractual Safeguard also make a huge difference by providing reactive protection in addition to semi-permanent buffs.

Yo….this hilarious Atog actually could win you the game in this deck. Get a ton of extra turns with Sage, then buff your creatures with Chronatog? The synergy isn't that good, but the notoriety you'd gain from pulling this off would be great.

Wrap Up

Time Sieve – illus. Franz Vohwinkel

It's always cool to see how old cards are made relevant again by new sets.

Extra turns can make players extra salty, so make sure your table is ready to take on some potentially visceral shenanigans before you play this one. And, as always, none of this is financial advice!